Do people read what they tweet? Don’t assume they have looked any further than the headline and lead . A study correlated how far people scrolled through an article with the number of tweets from the article. The relationship proved to be fairly weak.
(via How people read online: Why you won’t finish this article. - Slate Magazine)
This seems weirdly out of date to me.
I don’t know. This seems like a perfectly rational consistent and engaging second screen customer experience to me.
I mean, what network exec fan wouldn’t want e-commerce opportunities tied to the onscreen narrative through audio content recognition?
With all of the Yahoo-Tumblr reporting still going on right now it surprises me how many writers still mistake Tumblr for a “blogging platform.”
Anyone who has spent significant time on Tumblr knows that this whole “blog” thing is a front.
Literally.
70% of a given blog’s post traffic actually happens in the Dashboard. For some blogs, that percentage is even higher.
This makes things like ranking a Tumblr blog’s popularity through site traffic fairly dubious.
It also means that the value of Tumblr isn’t just in the original posts but the amplification of ideas through reblogs and the like.
This becomes apparent when you dive into Union Metrics for Tumblr and break down any given post’s reblog tree:
There’s probably an iceberg.gif of some sort that would work really well here.
(btw, the numbers in that image are from an “official” blog that I run, not my personal blog.)
Miss our webinar on Tumblr engagement? No worries! We’ve got it here.
In this recording, Kenyatta Cheese, Co-Founder of Everybody at Once, and Jenn Deering Davis, Co-Founder of Union Metrics, talk about Tumblr, brands and how (and why) to foster engagement on the platform. They also discuss what goes into a successful Tumblr campaign, how to measure engagement, improve your content— and more.
_____________________________
Curious about the presenters?
Kenyatta is part of Everybody at Once, a company working on audience development and social strategy for media, entertainment, and sports. You may have seen his work on the very popular Doctor Who Tumblr for BBC America.
Jenn is co-founder and Chief Customer Officer of Union Metrics, the company that makes Tumblr’s preferred analytics application. Jenn holds a PhD in Organizational Communication & Technology from UT Austin.
_____________________________
Get a chance to watch and listen? What did you think?
How to not be a sucky brand on Tumblr, an audiobook by me and Jenn Deering Davis.
One evening, as he sat at the screen watching retweets blossom from his promotional competition announcement, he received a direct message flag. It came from a rival brand, a salt-sharpened sports drink hugely popular is Europe. ‘Are you a real person too?’ it said.
He sat on it for almost two days without replying, weighing up the potential risks. Anything he sent could be screencapped and publicised. Eventually, succumbing to the strange loneliness of his medium, he replied: ‘Yes, I am. But so what?’
‘I was just curious. We are like secret celebrities.’
Over the following months he exchanged messages with several other large brands. Nobody ever introduced themselves or spoke of their lives beyond the Twitter feed. It was a strange kind of roleplaying, an extension of the mantle he wore as Quark Cola’s Twitter feed. It surprised him, although it probably shouldn’t have, how many celebrities were ghostwritten by employees like himself. He did not discover this directly, but the fact seemed well-known amongst the professional twittering community. Even those that appeared entirely personal and credibly delivered.
This is the conference where I first started talking publicly about the Doctor Who Tumblr. My talk (queued above) starts 17:00 in and runs for about 4 and a half minutes.
After that I highly suggest skipping back to watch Kevin Slavin’s opening on the history of the laugh track and the importance of the audience.
‘We are not building anything here,’ stated one morose-sounding detergent brand. ‘All those marketing guys pushing Twitter think you can build something on it. Awareness or brand or something. But they can’t back that up. We’re just a mirror of what’s happening in the real world. We’re just echoing awareness, not creating it. It might work for small coffee shops but for global brands we’re just a shapeless appendage.’ All this came in several messages. The brands tended to be verbose once they got talking. Probably overeducated and unemployable, like himself. He didn’t agree, he didn’t disagree. He consciously refused to give it thought. The pay was excellent for the hours he worked.
(thx @asimone)
Love this.
File under shocking but not surprising:
@kenyatta: Fascinating & heartbreaking research by @panthealee how apps like @HopStop @GoogleMaps are being used to aid human trafficking #scs13
I’ll post a link later today.
Do Not Taunt Happy Fun Blog
This is what the Girls HBO “Spirit Guidelines” feel like to me.
GIF (SPIRIT) Guidelines
GIFs should feature images from the HBO series GIRLS only
GIFs should not combine GIRLS content with any other content or material
Any text in your GIF must be a direct quote from GIRLS
All GIRLS content in GIFs must be obtained from authorized sources of HBO programming
GIFs should be approximately 5 seconds long
We reserve the right to select the GIFs that will be posted on this site
Have you ever read the sidebar of the official Girls HBO Tumblr?
Kills the mood a bit, don’t you think?
Ronen and I use permanent communication tools for non-permanent communications.
Although Josh Miller probably didn’t intend it to be, everyone is taking about his conversation with his 15 year-old sister as if it were sound ethnographic research and applied to all teenz.
In Israeli Attack on Hamas: Shock, Awe and Social Media
via NYTimes.com
As Israel began an attack on Gaza on Wednesday, killing a top military commander of Hamas, the government also took to Twitter to live-tweet the strike as it unfolded.
@IDFSpokesperson, the official Twitter account for the Israel Defense Forces, sent more than 25 messages over five hours as the attack occurred. The account also shared videos taken from the helicopter that killed Ahmed al-Jabari, Hamas’s top military commander, and warned of other attacks should Gaza retaliate.
Israeli officials even started their own hashtag for the strike, #PillarOfDefense.
“The IDF has begun a widespread campaign on terror sites & operatives in the #Gaza Strip, chief among them #Hamas & Islamic Jihad targets,” the Israeli military said on Twitter as the strike began.
This was followed by updates of the attack, including a 10-second video that showed Ahmed al-Jabari’s car being blown up as it traveled down a Gaza street. Officials then shared a link to the official I.D.F. blog, which explained who Mr. Jabari was and why the attack was important to Israel.
btw, Twitter’s Rules state:
Violence and Threats: You may not publish or post direct, specific threats of violence against others.
Liveblogging. It’s one of those tortured-English phrases that conjures up images of awards shows, Apple launch events, and Justin Bieber. Whenever something like this is added to the dictionary (kind of how “sexting” was, a couple months back) it’s a little amusing — seeing a slice of our somewhat-frivolous, hyper-connected world given some legitimacy by the “old guard,” as it were.
What is not amusing, however, is watching the Israel Defense Forces liveblog its current operation in Gaza. (And we’re not just saying that because the IDF doesn’t seem to own a decent liveblogging platform.) In addition to updates on the IDF blog, interested parties can follow the action on Twitter, thus ensuring that the news will come straight from the government’s mouth, without the pesky interference of the fourth estate.
Realtime war: Israeli military liveblogs, tweets attack on Hamas | The Verge (via new-aesthetic)
This is actually super fucking bizarre. Check the twitter feed here.
